Hello and welcome to Orlando City Scotland’s season review for Orlando City SC in the 2018/19 season. This article is based on our views and allows us to voice our opinions on Orlando City’s season performance.
So, let’s get started. We came into this season as a club and a fan base collectively, relatively positive. James O’Connor had taken over as head coach at the tail-end of the previous season and had shown signs of being able to take the team to the next level. We also brought in some new faces to the club, most notably the massive signing of Nani from Sporting Lisbon, which gave us reason to believe this could be the start of something special for Orlando. Players like Tesho Akindele, Ruan and Robin Jansson also made moves to Orlando.
The season started with a hard-fought home draw with NYCFC but it took until game 4 - away to the Red Bulls to pick up 3 points. This away win was massive and signalled a statement of intent from JOC and the boys as the Red Bull Arena is a notoriously tough place to visit and take a result from. All wanted now was consistency… and my god we didn’t get it! Between March 23rdand June 1st,we won 5 times but in between, we lost 6 games and drew with NYCFC once again. But having said this, there were a lot of things to be positive about. Compared with the previous season our defence looked a lot more solid with Lamine Sane and Robin Jansson at the heart of the defence. In the 2ndthird of the season, the mixed results continued and City flirted with a play-off place continuously which was both exciting and infuriating. Watching us play well so often and not picking up all three points in games - such as playing away to Portland and Philadelphia had an impression that made us think collectively as a supporter’s group that this may come back to haunt us.
However, in June we opened up our Open Cup campaign away to Memphis 901 and won 3-1 in comfortable fashion. This competition gave us some silverware to go after. With some luck of the draw, the hope that we could go deep in the cup was the common feeling amongst the OCSC community. Next was New England at home and again we prevailed 2-1 this time in what was a breath-taking extra time period. In the QF we again were at home to NYCFC and again after 90 minutes, it was a draw - which meant extra time again followed by penalties. Thanks to back-up keeper Adam Grinwis, we came out on top after penalties. This was arguably our favourite moment as City fans with the “running of the wall”, followed by the Grinwis show to set up a semi-final match with our rivals – Atlanta United. The semi-final proved to be a step too far and we were beaten 2-0, although our performance deserved more. This match (in our opinion) was a real kick in the teeth for the squad and led to a dismal end to the season in the league.
With regards to our thoughts after the league form, we turned out to be right. The final third of the MLS season was dreadful and with a number of teams around us not performing well either it made it even more frustrating, and in the end we missed the play-offs and this was enough to see JOC relieved of his duties less than 24 hours after our final game loss to Chicago Fire.
Overall, it has to go down as a poor season. If it wasn’t for such inconsistency, we would definitely be preparing for a play-off game at the moment for the first time in our clubs’ history. However, there have been some positives to take from the season. The biggest being that we have come a long way as a team. Now, we feel we are only a couple of players away from having a strong play-off team. Our priority over the winter is to acquire a consistent striker, creative midfielder and some good back up players to improve our strength in depth, as this season we never had much on the bench to come on and change a game in our favour. Other positives to take from the season were the performances of some players that maybe were not expected from them, however we were slightly underwhelmed by players such as Dom Dwyer and Chris Mueller, for whom we had high expectations for. They were goal scorers; however we feel they tailed off as the rolled on. Benji Michel came on leaps and bounds as the season progressed, Ruan was insane at times and was our choice for player of the year. Nani was excellent but was guilty of selfishness and inconsistency at times (in our opinion). Another key figure was new boy Jansson who was great for the most part.
So, that concludes our season review and we would like to thank MLS Scout Eire for getting in touch about writing this article and we hope to work again in the near future. Please do follow us also on twitter at (@OrlandoCitySCOT).
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